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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 09 Hansard (Tuesday, 17 August 2004) . . Page.. 3693 ..

I agree that those profit-seeking criminals deserve to be treated with severity and their profits attacked, but it is not enough to lash out in our anger. In the words of the MCCOC, the criminal law has an obvious role to play in any rational ensemble of measures designed to minimise the use of illicit drugs. But where is this government’s rational ensemble of measures that will produce this result? How does this bill fit into that ensemble? The government owes this Assembly a detailed explanation.

The minister notes that the problem of amphetamines has become particularly acute over recent years. Families want the government to come up with ways that reverse that and effectively protect young people from some of the worst consequences of their actions. Increasing levels of seizures and other indicators of market size show that this is not happening.

The AFP commissioner told us in 2001 that Asian drug barons made a decision to push methamphetamines rather than heroin, an injected drug. He said that their research told them that there was a new and much bigger market of people prepared to use methamphetamine pills. A big boost in potent methamphetamines like crystal meths roughly coincided with the 2001 heroin drought. The Prime Minister was quick to claim credit for that on behalf of law enforcement but not, of course, for the stimulants that are flooding the drug scene. In the words of the then New South Wales police commissioner, despite large heroin seizures in the past 18 months there was a rise in cocaine use and an enormous spread of amphetamines.

The marketing decision to push the stimulants rather than heroin was made following a string of bad seasons in Burma between 1997 and 2000 that reduced opium production by 54 per cent, at the time of a huge increase in demand for illicit opiates in nearby China. A booming Chinese demand alone had led the Office of Strategic Crime Assessments to forecast the heroin drought and flood of stimulants as long ago as 1996.

I mention these facts because they are at the heart of the rationale for this bill. In the depths of the heroin drought, the New South Wales commissioner concluded that we were losing the war. We are still losing it. We should not, therefore, be including among the worst criminals in this country the very young people we are trying to protect. I would add that across Australia there are different levels of penalties and responses to the use of cannabis, for example, but there is no difference in usage, even with the different legal responses.

The second point related to promoting the recovery and social reintegration of those harmed by drugs. I hope that there is no dissent in the Assembly about this objective. It is at the essence of harm minimisation. Virtually every measure adopted in this country that is proven to benefit users has involved a retreat from the usual rigour of the criminal law. They include: police no longer attending overdoses because that deters drug users from seeking help; the SCON system for minor cannabis offences that this bill would undermine; distribution of sterile syringes; and alternatives to sentencing, such as drug diversion and diversionary conferencing programs that provide early intervention and treatment options for people with drug problems.

I stress that drug users are human beings with a range of both problems and strengths. We must not define them by their problems, much less by just one. Overcoming

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